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Q: Statistics show that more people than ever are choosing to live alone. So why is there still a stigma to being single?

A: Cultural, pop cultural, political and familial presumptions cast singleness as a lonely, sad, pathetic, reviled existence. You haven’t grown up. You’re not making the right commitments. You’re viewed as not happy. I started the book after a good friend and I talked about being single for many years and having happy, lovely existences, but no one believed us because we didn’t have partners. We didn’t fit into the large cultural narrative of what it means to be grown up. I wrote the book to try to answer why there is this disconnect. Statistically, people are living happy single lives. But where is the representation of this happiness, the recognition of equality for single living?

Q: Where does that stigma come from?

A: I can only speculate about why singleness is so unnerving to couple culture. One reason might be that coupledom isn’t great either. Yes there are wonderful relationships. But if one relationship is supposed to be the most important, inevitably there will be disappointments. The single life is a scapegoat. It would be so much worse to be alone. It’s a scare tactic in some ways.

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Q: How is the single person portrayed in popular culture?

A: It’s not portrayed, not accurately. It’s always this negative character, lonely, not fully adult. Singles are often portrayed as losers. You are either pre- or post-couple, never just happily by yourself.

Q: Like Jennifer Aniston, forever “Sad Jen?”

A: Because she lost out in the love triangle with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. All her dating is seen as sad, futile. This is a woman who has made an enormous amount of money and probably has lots of friends.

Q: There must be some happy, complete singleton in pop culture. Although all I can think of is Mary Richards in “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” in the 1970s. Jerry Seinfeld dated, but never seemed anxious to get married.

A: “Seinfeld” is an interesting example. The characters were all single but were cast as strange, neurotic and idiosyncratic, too immature to grow up. Their attempts at dating failed for ridiculous reasons. The overall message was that these people were not great exemplars of how to live your life. On the last show, they ended up in jail together.

Mary Tyler Moore was so long ago I can’t speak authoritatively about it. But I think in the last 30 years the couple compulsion really amped up.

Q: You write about “the toxic, totalitarian prominence of the couple.” Heavy words — why is it toxic?

A: It’s toxic because we put a lot of pressure on that relationship. You try so hard to make that person be so meaningful. A lot of couples collapse under the pressure. This book isn’t saying being single is better. I want to take the pressure off coupledom, by showing that being single is also a valuable life. I want to take away the primacy, hierarchy of the couple relationship, so that people can choose it rather than have it chosen for them.

Q: OK, but “totalitarian?”

A: The couple form keeps people in line, it’s predictable. To live your life a different way is more unpredictable, harder to target.

Q: You do sound like maybe you’re coming out of a very bad breakup.

A: I’m not. There’s this assumption that if you’re critiquing coupledom, you’re bitter, failed at love. I’ve been in very happy relationships and unhappy ones. I’ve been happy single and unhappy single. I’m trying to clear up space for both singles and couples to thrive.

Q: On her deathbed, your grandmother said, “You don’t want to die alone.” Life, never mind death, is tough. Isn’t there wisdom in her words?

A: It was very sweet. She was worried about me. But it comes down to a spooky threat, an inducement to make you get into a relationship. Maybe I’ll be a single person with lots of friends. I’m just trying to dislodge those bits of wisdom that vilify life choices.

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Q: Your book, published by New York University Press, is meant for an academic audience. Why do you think you’ve gotten so much popular media attention?

A: People don’t want to think about being single as lonely and pathetic. They don’t want to think of couples as the valiant winners.

Q: Does that make you the leader of the singles movement?

A: I don’t know about leader, but I’m suddenly a poster boy for singledom.

Q: It’s a tough role, Michael. Does it mean you can never date again?

A: Maybe I can be flexibly single.

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